An-Najah Staff

In recent days, limited efforts were applied to improve highway safety in Palestinian cities. Establishing highway safety programs is essential to achieve this purpose. The main component in such programs is planning. The main process in the planning component is the collection of accident data to form the accident database. Then, the analysis of such database will identify the hazardous locations. Effective countermeasures should then be applied at these hazardous locations. These countermeasures should eliminate or minimize the hazards of these accidents. Therefore, the application of such highway safety program will result in safety improvements. The police accident report form is the most important source to create the accident database. A new comprehensive police accident report was designed in this study. A new computer program "Accident" based on Microsoft Access Software was also developed in this study. This program is designed for a computerized data recording and tiling. lt is user friendly. It also provides options for data retrieval and analysis. In this study, the outline of the proposed safety program for Palestinian cities as discussed. Accident data in this study were based upon accident records of years 1997 and 1998 for the Nablus City. Threshold values for identifying hazardous locations were established based on these data. According to the established threshold values, Al-Hesba Intersection was one of the most hazardous locations in Nablus City. A detailed study was conducted for this intersection. Proper countermeasures were specified at this intersection such as retime signal, police enforcement, and repainting all pavement markings. The results of this research showed that Palestinian cities are in dire need for the implementation of such a program. Therefore, developing the highway trafhc safety program in Palestine is recommended.

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